Pebbles in the pond

Horatios at the Bridge

Volume 5, Issue 17Part 41 of the ongoing saga of The Great Being, the One Self that manifests as each of us.

We have been following the experiences of two Agents of Cosmic Intelligence, Melchizedek and Layla, here on a mission that started in 200,000 BC. They are now well into their new life, around 40,000 BC in the mountains of northwestern Spain.

In the previous episode, a surprise attack on the lower camp took out most of the tribespeople there, and with the enemy in fast pursuit, the King and his warriors took their rock-rolling battle positions while the women and children retreated to even higher ground with the elders. Then suddenly, in the midst of battle, the mountain erupted in an avalanche of rocks, burying many in both tribes. In the aftermath, it seemed briefly that the war was over. Until they realized the enemy was again in pursuit. Earlier episodes.

Melchizedek and Layla, as Blu and Ska, had requested extra spears to be made for just this point in the battle. While the inexorable enemy climbed toward them in immense force, outnumbering them ten to one, and with the large rocks all used up, spears could be thrown at the point men in the enemy’s assault force. As expert marksmen, Blu and Ska were nearly the only warriors capable of doing real damage this way, and soon the enemy was on the upper plateau and pushing back the defenders in a rout.

Our Agents had no time to path to each other, and each carried wounded as they covered the retreat by falling back more slowly than the rest of the tribe, inflicting what damage they could, and killing many.

Melchi! Layla pathed at him involuntarily, shocked to see Blu use the body of one of their own as a shield to deflect a mace blow that would have killed Blu. Melchizedek had sensed the fellow tribesman had died on his shoulder but he had no time to explain that to Layla. Every second was used to preserve their two lives while slowing down the attackers as much as they could — which was not much.

The enemy flowed around them, dangerously encircling them, and Melchizedek pathed to Layla Now! as he flung the dead comrade at the enemy, turned and ran. Layla as Ska ran at his side, not dismounting the still-breathing comrade-in-arms over his shoulder. They reached a perilous upward slope and scrambled up it, Blu helping Ska who was slowed by the wounded tribesman. Without having to try to do so, the loose rocks they scrambled over became a torrent on the pursuers, giving them a chance to get to the next plateau above. Except it was not a plateau.

When they reached the next level, they saw that it was a rock bridge connecting to the next plateau above. This then was where they would make their stand. Ska realized there was no way to hold the fallen warrior and face the enemy at the same time, and as gently as possible put the man down behind them on the rock bridge, then turned quickly to face the enemy charging up the mountain at them. There seemed to be endless numbers of them.

Blu and Ska stood abreast at the entrance to the rock bridge. Fortunately the rocks around them funneled the enemy so that only two or three enemy soldiers could come at them at the same time. Thus began a horrible dance of death during which Blu and Ska became killing machines, murdering and maiming endless soldiers. There was no time to think about it, just react.

The souls of Melchizedek and Layla inside Blu and Ska were overwhelmed with grief at what they were doing, seeing images of the wives and children of these men as they brutally ended their lives. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to them in all of their remembered incarnations. They couldn’t stand it. As they fought and the dead piled up around them, being climbed over by the living enemy, they escaped inside entirely by allowing the Blu and Ska brains to do what those new brains had always wanted to do, had always tried to do, but could never overcome the strength of the self-awareness of the two Agents. Now the Agents willingly escaped into oblivion and ceded the territory to the brains of Blu and Ska, who continued the butchery without remorse.